President Obama reaches out to Iran

President Barack Obama outlined an engaged role on Tuesday for the United States in the pursuit of peace and stability in the Middle East, as he signaled a new willingness to pursue diplomatic talks with Iran and called on the United Nations Security Council to threaten consequences if Syria does not follow through on its promise to give up its chemical weapons.

Iran will be a diplomatic “focus” for the United States, Obama told the United Nations General Assembly, as he’s directed Secretary of State John Kerry to work with the European Union and the governments of United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China to engage in talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s government.

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Obama slams Putin

PHOTOS: U.N. General Assembly

“The roadblocks may prove to be too great but I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested,” he said. Given the virtually nonexistent U.S.-Iran relationship over the past three decades, “I don’t believe this difficult history can be overcome overnight” because “the suspicions run too deep.”

“But I do believe that if we can resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear program, that can serve as a major step down a long road towards a different relationship – one based on mutual interests and mutual respect,” he said. The Iranian delegation, seated in the second row, did not visibly react to Obama’s remarks, according to the White House pool reporter present.

Obama’s remarks Tuesday centered on how the United States and the United Nations can help ease tensions in the Middle East and North Africa, and aid in “the hard work of forging freedom and democracy” in the aftermath of recent popular uprisings in the region.

One way the U.N. can engage, he said, is for the Security Council to take action to help ensure that Bashar Assad’s regime relinquishes control of its chemical weapons.

Assad’s accounting of his stockpile is a good first step, Obama said, but the international community — and not just the United States — must do more to compel Assad to continue to follow through.

“There must be a strong Security Council resolution to verify that the Assad regime is keeping its commitments,” Obama said. “There must be consequences if they fail to do so. If we cannot agree even on this, then it will show that the United Nations is incapable of enforcing the most basic of international laws.”

The international community’s “response has not matched the scale of the challenge” in Syria, especially at the UN, where there’s been no formal action to enforce the chemical weapons ban — “meaningful prohibitions whose origins are older than the United Nations itself.”

The president was insistent that Assad’s regime was responsible for the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus, telling world leaders that “it is an insult to human reason” to suggest — as Russia has — that anyone other than Assad regime perpetrated the attack. The Syrian delegation did not visibly react to the president’s remarks.

Obama acknowledged that his calls for continue U.S. involvement in the Middle East would draw skepticism from leaders and nations aware of America’s rocky history in engagement around the globe. But, he said, “the United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries.”

“The notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn’t borne out by America’s current policy or public opinion,” he said. “Indeed, as the recent debate within the United States over Syria clearly showed, the danger for the world is not an America that is eager to immerse itself in the affairs of other countries, or take on every problem in the region as its own. The danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war; rightly concerned about issues back home; and aware of the hostility that our engagement in the region has engendered throughout the Muslim World, may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill.”

Obama continued, offering an implicit rebuke of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent comments on American exceptionalism.

“Some may disagree, but I believe America is exceptional,” Obama said. He added that the United States is exceptional because it stands up for not just its own interests but “for the interests of all.”

In a New York Times op-ed earlier this month, Putin wrote, “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”

After the speech, the press pool traveling with the president got a brief review of Obama’s speech from Secretary of State John Kerry. “It was good. It was good,” he said.

Obama spoke second at the UN, following Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who last week cancelled a state visit to Washington, citing Brazilians’ concerns about the National Security Agency’s surveillance in their country.